Serious Games challenging us to play a better future
GK is hosting the UNICEF A World Fit for Children Festival this week from December 18 - 22, 2006, at Second Life. The schedule includes voting for the favorite build, attend the dance party with Professor Henry Jenkins, and meet the judges at the award ceremony.
On the 18th, Mariel from Voices of Youth (UNICEF -VOY), shared her experiences with teens in TSL. She kicked off the event with a short interview, and helped GK give out the award for the winning team that won the highest votes for "Most Popular Build of the Day" as well as the winner from the UNICEF Scavenger Hunt.
HJ - "We have to think of ways to use games not just to escape reality but to re-engage with reality. And I think that is the exciting things about the kind of work you are doing at Global Kids. It is both grounded in the virtual space and the real space. You are talking about real things, that touch real people. And you are asking people to bring what they learn here back into their own communities to make a difference. That is one of the reasons why I really believe in what Global Kids is trying to accomplish."
- How do we expand the educational process by using video games? We need to value what goes on in game spaces.
- Youth is learning how to be part of a community through technology, how to care about issues, express their opinions, and find out what is taking place in the world around them.
- Video games and especially platforms such as Second Life, provide roles and goals for learning and information to act upon. Using virtual worlds or games to think through the experience of being a city planner, historian, environmental scientist helps to to structure knowledge.
- Second Life, is emerging as an important space for people doing a lot of important things. It is as diverse as the real world itself and people are able to try things they could never do in the real world, such as reinvent the economy and imagine new governments.
Creating disconfort with the "status quo"
- Continue to look for battles over who owns our culture. These decisions are going to determine how much we can participate in the communities that we do.
- How can we as librarians expand the educational process through video games? How are we doing this already?
- Are we valuing online participation through our policies and practices? How can we value it better? How can we get comfortable with what is 'worth' holding valuable?
- How can we create more opportunities for youth to be part of an online community?
- How will battles of who owns culture play out in our libraries and how can we inform the youth we interact with about this?
What is a World fit for children?
In 1990, World leaders gathered in a summit dedicated to children. In it, they made international agreements on things governments would have to do to ensure children a fair environment. Eleven years later, they gathered again to see all the things that had been done and their effects. They realised that, despite the advance in many aspects, some were still far from being what they had planned eleven years earlier. Taking this into account, they established a series of points and paths governments would have to take from then on. All of them are concerning four main issues: Education, Health, Aids/HIV and Abuse/Exploitation. This leads us to the contest - A World Fit for Children Building Contest, the biggest one in Teen Second Life so far.
In 1990, World leaders gathered in a summit dedicated to children. In it, they made international agreements on things governments would have to do to ensure children a fair environment. Eleven years later, they gathered again to see all the things that had been done and their effects. They realised that, despite the advance in many aspects, some were still far from being what they had planned eleven years earlier. Taking this into account, they established a series of points and paths governments would have to take from then on. All of them are concerning four main issues: Education, Health, Aids/HIV and Abuse/Exploitation. This leads us to the contest - A World Fit for Children Building Contest, the biggest one in Teen Second Life so far.
What is the contest about?
In a few words, teens were required to make buildings on Teen Second Life that pretty much represent the ways these four main issues have to be addressed. They were taught about these issues in an interactive, 2-hour workshop (that was very fun, too!) They could build anything they want – from an exhibit to interactive games.
The winners will be announced today, at 4pm EST on GK Island.
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